The film ends with the line, "A trench is a trench. They are all the same." Of course they most certainly are not all the same, especially this trench, and that is the irony. Bosnia won the Foreign Language Oscar in 2002 for their wonderfully absurd yet deeply saddening presentation of the war between Bosnia and Herzegovina at the height of the conflict in 1993. It is both brutal and harsh, while being very funny in the blackest of ways, making it an incredibly effective addition to the war film category.
When I began watching the movie I was not sure who I was to be rooting for, but it turned out to be a film in which the characters were soldiers, yes, but they were people first, people pitted against one another, but never really sure what it was that they were fighting about. In our trench a Bosnian, Ciki, and a Serb, Nino, become trapped with each other between the enemies' lines. A third companion, originally though to be dead but just unconscious, awakens to find himself lying atop an active mine. Although everybody wants to leave they are forced to remain in the trench with the active mine as their enemy is insurance that none of them will get killed by opposing forces if they try to leave.
The situation becomes a worldwide spectacle as the UN and a global news station become involved. The situation turns to creating a ceasefire and trying to find a way to diffuse the mine while maintaining good rapport for the relief efforts. While things are going on on a large scale outside of the trench, in No Man's Land Ciki and Nino try to find a way to tolerate one another and keep the peace though both of them are understandably on edge. The film does a beautiful job of humanizing both characters, not choosing sides, and really trying to show the plight of the two factions. The situation is dire; they are five feet away from someone that has been conditioned to kill them, and yet they need to use each other as a life support system. It is a tricky problem that is more emotionally charged than I would have originally thought at first.
The three men in the trench give some terrific performances as the men who fight, but are so frustrated when they come to realize that it might all be for naught. Watching the movie you see clear flashes of anger and resentment from the film maker as they jab their larger message at the audience: wars are started by politicians, not by people. These men had lives, they had loved ones, they were young and too busy to care enough about the other side, or to hate enough to go to war. There were definite hints that the film makers believed the war was fostered by high up men in suits, and that makes watching these poor men in the trenches all the more disheartening.
I mentioned that this film had an absurdist streak to it, and that also revealed itself in the big picture. There was a definite humor to this film, but it was one that made me smile, and then made me slightly depressed. The leader of the group set out to help the men was Capt. Marchand, a Frenchman desperately trying to get things moving despite orders from upstairs to remain stationary. He tries so hard to get the ball rolling, but he can never find anyone who speaks French. Nobody that he meets speaks the same language, and it becomes this ongoing joke that is at once humorous as well as frustrating, as it speaks largely to the greater efforts that happened (or didn't happen, perhaps) in the case of the Bosnian War. Everyone was impotent in their actions, and that stagnation recreated the conflict between Slovenia and Croatia, so they say.
This is an interesting movie to me because right off the bat you know exactly how the movie will end. Well, maybe not exactly, but there are a list of possible outcomes that the film can take based on the situation presented: the mine explodes, the mine is defused; everyone dies, everyone lives. Then it is simply a matter of choosing the correct combination. Even knowing this the film was absorbing. There were some incredibly well done scenes, particularly those within the trench, a great script, and powerful messages. It was not gratuitously violent, but the wounds suffered were impactful--as they should be. I may not know immediately where Bosnia is on a map of Europe, but I know those men, and that is enough for me.
3.5/4
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